Torture in Saydnaya Prison

Torture in Saydnaya Prison is based on the spatial and acoustic testimony of survivors of Saydnaya Prison—a notorious prison, operated by the Syrian government, in which tens of thousands have perished. As there are no publicly available images of the prison’s interior, FA worked with five former prisoners and employed architectural and acoustic modelling to reconstruct the architecture of the prison from the survivors’ memories. This investigation highlights how the spatial structure of the prison is not only the location of torture but also an instrument in its perpetuation. This project will be part of a specialised course at Birzeit University’s Department of Architecture that focuses on prison reconstruction and on visual and spatial techniques that can be used in the documentation of testimonies of trauma.

25 January - 2 April 2020, A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah. Exhibition with public seminars and workshops of FA members with human-rights and legal groups in Palestine. Co-curated by Yazid Anani and Shourideh C. Molavi.